The Kintigh Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant at 7725 Lake Road in the Town of Somerset, will likely be auctioned as part of ongoing deregulation in the electricity industry.

Kintigh is one of six coal-fired generation plants in the state owned by New York State Electric and Gas Corp. that is on the block to be auctioned by the company.

NYSEG also plans to auction its 50 percent stake in a Pennsylvania plant and 18 percent ownership of Nine Mile Point Two nuclear power plant near Oswego.

A date for the auction has not been set, but an outline for the event will be submitted by February to the five-member Public Service Commission for approval. PSC staff have agreed to the plan.

The auction is planned to be completed before August 1999, the plan's deadline for all NYSEG service areas to be fully open to private competition.

As part of the plan, competition in NYSEG's Lockport division of eastern Niagara County and western Orleans County will be opened by August.

"Kintigh will be one of those on the auction block," said Katherine Karlson, NYSEG spokesman.

She said a restructured NYSEG will bid on Kintigh and the other plants at the auction.

"The details of that have not been worked out yet," said Edward Collins, PSC spokesman. He said PSC staff would develop an auction plan.

"The concept is to maximize the benefits to rate payers," he said.

Opened in 1984, the 1,200-acre Kintigh plant is the newest in NYSEG's holdings. It has 163 employees.

The facility was originally named Somerset Generating Plant and was renamed in 1991 for Allen Kintigh, NYSEG president when the plant went online.

He is credited with building the facility on time and under budget and is a current member of NYSEG's board of directors.

Known primarily for its 625-foot vertical exhaust stack, billowing white smoke into the sky above Lake Ontario, the plant has a peak generation capacity of 726 megawatts of electricity, or enough to meet the average needs of about 800,000 households.

Kintigh accounts for 25 percent of NYSEG's total generating capacity. It took more than three years to build at a cost of $1.1 billion.

"Generating electricity is basically a simple process but you have to add a lot of stuff to make it happen," said Charles Sjoberg, Kintigh plant manager.

This is how it works: Coal is delivered to the facility via the Somerset Rail Road Corp., a subsidiary of NYSEG with tracks stretching from the plant about 15 miles south to connect with Conrail tracks near Lockport.

The railroad has its own coal cars and an engine at Kintigh to move and unload cars.

A typical train has 130 open-top coal cars, carrying 15,000 tons of coal. It takes about four hours to unload a train.

The train is pulled through a linear coal transfer building. Each car is pulled in succession into a huge steel framework called a rotary dumper.

Large clamps at the top of the dumper fasten the car to the tracks and the entire assembly -- car, tracks and surrounding steel framework -- spin upside down to empty the coal into a 125-foot below-ground pit. Revolving couplers allow the cars to remain hooked to the train.

"We just tip the cars upside down and the coal falls out," Sjoberg said.

The plant burns 5,300 tons of coal per day, or about 1.8 million tons a year. The coal comes from Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Once dumped, coal is moved via conveyor belt into coal transfer buildings for storage in large outdoor piles or sent to a coal bunker inside the plant to be fed into six pulverizers.

Powdered coal is then blown through 48 one-foot pipes into the furnace to heat the boiler.

"The process is to burn the dust in a large fireball in suspension," Sjoberg said. That ensures the most efficient combustion.

Heat from the combustion is transferred to a series of water-filled tubes to create steam. The steam is further heated by gases from the furnace and, ultimately, fed to the turbine at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The steam expands against a series of pinwheel-type blades to turn the turbine shaft.

The spinning shaft, in turn, cranks the connected generator (a spinning magnet surrounded by a copper coil) to produce electricity. The turbine and generator are about the size of a tractor-trailer.

In principle, Kintigh's generator is similar to an automobile generator, Sjoberg said.

It takes more than 1 million horsepower to drive Kintigh's generator, he said.

The generator operates in a casing filled with hydrogen.

"That's solely to be able to cool it more effectively and make it more efficient," Sjoberg said.

Power is generated at about 24,000 volts. Transformers boost it to 345,000 volts for transmission into the statewide power grid.

"In a sense, it's all about transferring energy from one form to another," Sjoberg said.

As part of the process, steam used to turn the turbine is later condensed through the use of water pumped from Lake Ontario.

The lake water passes through miles of stainless steel tubes in a large condenser where it cools the steam, which then turns to water. The water is then recycled to the boiler.

The lake water remains in a self-contained system and is returned to the lake about 35 degrees warmer.

The process doesn't end there.

"Coal has ash in it and one of the things we must do is remove the ash before the gas goes out the stack," Sjoberg said.

The gases are passed through an electrostatic precipitator, consisting of a 28-foot high by about 60-foot long charged metal plate and grill placed nine inches apart.

The gas passes between the plate and grill and ash particles are drawn to the charged plate and then fall into an ash hopper.

The gas continues into an open tank where it is sprayed with limestone slurry to remove sulfur.

Sulfur in the gas combines with the limestone to form solid calcium sulfite. Waste ash and calcium sulfite are combined and deposited on a 22-acre onsite landfill.

At the same time, water from the limestone saturates the desulfurized gas.

"It goes out as a wet gas," said Sjoberg. "That's why you tend to see such a billowy, white plume at the top of the stack."

Removal of ash from the gas is 99.5 percent efficient and the gas is released 88 percent sulfur-free, officials said.

In addition, the Electric Power Research Institute has a high-sulfur test center at the plant to study new ways to limit the emission of sulfur dioxide.

"They do environmental research on air pollution," Sjoberg said.

Yearly operations and maintenance costs at the plant total about $85 million.

NYSEG is currently involved in litigation against Somerset seeking lower property tax assessment on the facility.

NYSEG for 1997 paid combined county, town and school taxes of $13,799,840.

"That's a significant cost," said David Greenfield, NYSEG community projects manager. "Taxes will continue to be an issue to us. We will continue to strive to get them reduced."

The plant is currently assessed at $598.5 million. NYSEG seeks to lower the assessment to $260.4 million.

Officials do not know what price the plant would bring at auction.

"It's not what we ask for it. What would a potential buyer feel it is worth to own this particular item?" said Karlson.